Philadelphia PA: Some of the most attractive
chapbooks I’ve seen out of the United States have to be Brian Teare’s Albion Books, the most recent of which, the first volume of the fifth series, is a
double-binding, including Rachel Moritz’ “ELEMENTARY RITUALS” alongside Juliet Patterson’s “DIRGE.” There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why these two
texts are paired, perhaps the authors are collaborators or close friends,
writing poems in tandem? Or simply the editor/publisher has joined the two.

The first
bridges were probably made by nature—something as simple as a log fallen across
a stream.

The original
base of the word, bruw, or ‘log-road.’

Through the window
you think of these words standing in the blunt arms of morning: stage, landing, gangway.

*

Your father
was found hanging from a concrete footbridge

a few miles
from your childhood home. The bridge

twenty-seven
feet high, stretched over a busy thoroughfare, linking

a golf course
and a wooded park. (“DIRGE”)

Juliet Patterson’s striking sequence “DIRGE” works through a meditation on the death
of her father (or, the narrator’s father; since I know nothing about Patterson,
one should never presume) from suicide. Her “DIRGE” scrapes out the heart in
long, languid lines. Why haven’t I heard of Juliet Patterson before this? On
the other side of the same chapbook, Rachel Moritz’s “ELEMENTARY RITUALS” is
another small meditative work, composed out of six longer poems that stretch
the loveliest lines that take up small spaces but a large attention. Her rituals,
one might say, are startlingly precise, one that is the perfect blend of lyric
language and absolute clarity:

Mt Pleasant ON: From kemeny babineau’s Laurel Reed Books comes CHORTLING AMERICAN SHOW GOO: thirty three poems by Toronto poet, editor and small press publisher Daniel f. Bradley (2012). Bradley has been an active writer and small press
enthusiast for years, author of numerous small press publications going back
two decades, including publications by curvd h&z, BookThug, tapt, Outland,
Produce Press, above/ground press and many, many others. Given his years of
publication, it might be interesting to see someone attempt to wrestle with his
years of output for the sake of either an essay on his ongoing work, or a
selected poems, to get a sense of just what he has accomplished over the years,
through dozens of small-run missives. The opening poem to the collection nearly
gives a description of what follows, asking the question of what this might be,
as though the author is learning through the same process as the potential
reader:

i suppose i
could hot wire this thing

flat bread their
is no escape

perfect for
your boneless

wings failed

your highness
you were right

you were
right about me

i love my
loll pop separated

at the feet
almost

empty
ignition switch

light reflecting
metallic

what’s this
all about

everything in
a bag

that feeds me
a secret

life

The sequence
of pieces that make up the untitled poems of CHORTLING AMERICAN SHOW GOO: thirty three poems feel akin to the
poems of American poet Kate Greenstreet for their fragmented structure and
collage-aspect that accumulate into something larger, yet difficult to
articulate, as the form itself is less static than constantly shifting. As Nic
Coivert writes in his review of the collection (included inside the back of the
chapbook) from Canadian Poetry Previews
Magazine, “These poems are like smashed dreams.” Bradley’s poems also have
a dark edge of surrealism, perhaps one more abstract and less of the obvious humour
than others in the informal “Toronto surrealists” group, whether Lillian Necakov, Stuart Ross or Gary Barwin. In some of the pieces, there’s something
of the single line-breath, as though they’re meant to be read quickly, without
break.

In Rohrer’s
six-poem chapbook, four of which are three-sonnet pieces, each titled “SONNET,”
that twist the language of the first piece into the second two section,
re-working the lines of the first to create entirely different poems with the
same language, as here, the second part of the three-part “SONNET” (the first
part is quoted just above):

I’m sitting
in a small bar in Brooklyn

because she
is a butterfly. He is

into our
highballs. The city outside

mutilated all
his expectations

to live like
this, we decide. We crumble

everywhere
down there, in the air. Inside

he wrote
amazing poems because he

will climb
the pyramid & leap off it.

Discussing his
next move: surely his wife

was fucking a
wizard. This perspective

consumes
things like an enormous creature.

And he was
naked. The wizard threw him

A tiny black
bean. It’s not necessary.

a small thin towel
to cover himself with.

Bookending the
collection are two longer poems, each composed with short phrases that complete
a single, fragmented, seemingly-endless and confused sentence, endlessly
continuing. Throughout the poems here, is Rohrer attempting to shock, startle
or confound? These poems require a shift in perception and perspective, one
that playfully pokes at expectation and collision.